Track Listing

1. Trick Of The Night
2. Bury Me Deep In Love
3. Kelly's Blues
4. Home Town Farewell Kiss
5. Unmade Love
6. Open For You
7. Holy Water
8. Blinder By The Hour
9. Vagabond Holes
10. Jerdacuttup Man
11. Calenture
12. Save What You Can

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #135472 in Music
• Released on: 1997-04-21
• Number of discs: 1

From the Label
Daring to change people's attitude towards Antipodean rock in the mid-eighties, The Triffids' music lives on. This is a testament to a unique group. All formats of this reissue feature nine bonus tracks, including B sides and demos. Initial orders of the CD will include a 42 page 'perfect bound' booklet within a slipcase, similar in style to the Pavement reissue of Crooked Rain. The booklet documents for the first time the ideas and inspirations behind the creation and recording of this classic 80s indie album.

Customer Reviews

major label bling trumps artistic nous
After the magnificence of Born Sandy Devotional, the intimacy of In The Pines, and signing to Island records, it looked like The Triffs could do no wrong. Sadly, the need for hit singles and major label bling overcame the sure judgement that had gone before. You only have to hear the 2nd disc of rehearsals and demos to realize Calenture could have been a masterpiece of the 1980's if they'd followed that path. Some of the great tunes on this album are fairly well obscured by overly obtrusive production, synths, and a drum machine. And the liner notes indicating that this is a timeless piece of work are simply not true, it sounds like a late 1980's pop record. Still it contains some of my fave triffs tracks, 'bury me deep in love', 'hometown farewell kiss' and 'save what you can'. Magnificent. This and The Black Swan could've been so much better, instead they are the watershed for some fans like me, too commercial and too dated now to listen too, and unable to hold a candle to BSD. but oh, those demos, it could've been a contender. If only it hadn't been ruined by that damn drum machine!!

20 years on and even better
I have always loved this albim ever since i sat listening to a review copy a journo friend lent me, while sitting on the stairs of my then flat 20 years ago...The triffids were an incredible group, who came a long way in a short time...from Treeless Plain to this was only 3 years and this is truely great. There is a 'majestic sweep' to the songs that is triely emotive. There is a slight 80's style prodiction on Kelly's Blues, but that is about it and songs such as Open for You and Save What You Can are just great. Add to that some B sides- personal favourite Region Unkown, which i have long wanted to get hold of on Cd and you have a classic....And, if you don't like the producion of the original, then the bonus CD of Demos tells you what the album could have sounded like had they done it 'In the Pines' style...here the sheer quality of the songs stands out for itself...alas the public in 1987 preferred less quality faire, but buy this and you will own a timeless classic.

The other reissues 'Born Sandy Devotional' and 'In the Pines' are also excellent, with the latter slightly more interesting, it will be interesting to see what happens when a revamped Treeless Plain and Black Swan hit the streets in the future...maybe 'Plain' will give some insights into the roots of the Triffids...

Deluxe reissue of 1987's classic
'Calenture' was the Triffids fourth and penultimate album, for me it's as wonderful as 1986's 'Born Sandy Devotional' that recently garnered positive reviews for its similar expanded reissue by Domino. The Triffids are one of those bands that probably should have made it, but never did, as a result something of a cult concern (see: Microdisney, The Go-Betweens, Big Star, Felt, The Sound, The Replacements, The Saints, Comsat Angels, X, The Vaselines etc). This is one of those albums that certain people will adore, though some of the production sound is a little of its era, which isn't really the band's problem (future Pixies-producer Gil Norton, a few years fresh from 'Ocean Rain' produced). The original 12 track album with that killer cover is always an album people should own, but in this two-disc expanded version is more than a must. Domino spoil us, they really do...Heck, the album is worth buying for the title - Calenture being hallucinatory fields of green pictured by sailors lost at sea...

I love all the songs here, I'd say this is as definitive as fan's fave 'Born Sandy Devotional' - any bland period detail is levelled by the wonder these songs evoke. I love all the songs here, especially 'Hometown Farewell Kiss' and 'Save What You Can', two songs that I can listen to over and over, until the end of time. 'Hometown Farewell Kiss' has one of the greatest choruses in history, but it was of no concern to the masses at the time. That aching steel-guitar set to David McComb's gorgeously aching vocals and those words, those poetic words you can live in and watch them burn, let the flames grow higher. "My eyes are filled with light/my feet can't touch the ground/From here I can see the sights of my hometown city burning down/Now it blazes for me house by house/& my legs buckle under me/I don't mind I sing an old song of joy/For I know why and why it had to be..." - which says it all. Invoke a gorgeous apocalypse in the chorus-form...

'Kelly's Blues' following its spoken-word intro from Jill Birt drifts off into a sound like Microdisney doing the Bunnymen or The Cure. I think 'Calenture' fits better with the third and fourth Bunnymen albums than the Bunnymen's rubbish 5th record - though David McComb's vocals will probably remind many of their fantastic peers The Go-Betweens. 'Jerdacuttup Man' is a darker moment, reminding me a little of Tom Waits in the intro, while a song like several here and on other Triffids-albums that demonstrate the Triffids have been of influence. I certainly thought a few tracks on last year's over-rated album of the year 'Funeral' by the Arcade Fire owed a debt to this band...

The opener 'Bury Me Deep in Love' was meant to be their 'Suddenly', but sadly it wasn't...which is probably just as well. It's too sublime to be associated with the silly TV programme 'Neighbours' (Madge & Harold's wedding...don't ask. Though I loved the magic mushroom episode with Jim Robinson going all Butthole Surfers!!)You wouldn't get Scott Walker songs in 'Hollyoaks', and Walker is a comparison here - like Microdisney's 'Mrs Simpson' & The Go-Betweens' 'The Wrong Road', this is a song worthy of his reach. The strings are as sublime as those on the last Smiths album too. & have I mentioned the divine 'Blinder by the Hour', which like closing track 'Save What You Can' is a bruised piano-lead joy - so very happy-sad. The kind of romantic wanderlust that Tindersticks and Jack and The Go-Betweens and The Blue Nile and even The World Party have. Just listen to 'Save What You Can' and if you don't need this album then...

'Calenture' has always been a great album that I discovered too late in the 1990s, but is even more necessary in this deluxe reissue. It deserves more than the usual cult audience, it's too good for so few - I hope once the Triffids' back-catalogue is reissued, David McComb's solo albums & the work of Black-eyed Susans get similar treatments. These are songs to live by, and songs that capture the tricky thing called life, the common response - How could you live without it? What would that be like?